Goddamn the gods
This week has been what grad school should’ve been: lots of drinking whiskey and shooting the shit with our idols.
Except, it’s confusing when they turn out to be real people, and give too many details about their hernia surgery, etc.
Plus, this:
On Sunday night, Lefty and I picked up The Smartest Man in the Room at an event of his and kidnapped him over to Youpers. Dude was deeply impressed at the freeness of the drinks. Hey, we aim to please.
I remember TSM telling us why a chapbook is called a chapbook, but I can’t remember why. [Wikipedia says it’s because of chapmen, aka peddlers. Somehow TSM made it sound more sparkly and revelatory.] I remember many funny things being said, zero of them by me. I kept starting sentences then abandoning them: that kind of drunk. TSM sang a gospel song. We talked about books. We snarfed a bunch of empanadas. Then Lefty got up to go to the bathroom, and we started singing her praises. You know, like:
-That Left Hook!
-She is amazing!
-Seriously!
-Right?
-She’s like no other!
-Why do you think I’ve been in love with her for the last three years?
WHOA. The Smartest Man in the Room, who is our hero (?) and spiritual advisor, says he’s in love with Left Hook?!?!?
She and I were both pretty surprised. It was like a Jane Austen novel: Lefty thought The Smartest Man in the Room was in love with me, and I thought The Smartest Man in the Room was incapable of love, and most other feelings!
I think Lefty’s still pretty shell-shocked.
TSM is insanely charming, weirdly youthful, and cute in the face, but the below-the-neck situation is dicey. It would have to be a COMPLETELY PITCH-DARK ROOM, is what I’m saying.
Plus, it’s a little like your if your dad said he was in love with you. If your dad was a Pulitzer Prize nominee.
3 Responses to “Goddamn the gods”
1 Firecracker 20 September 2007 @ 2:40 pm
Hell yeah Left Hook! That dude oaks!!!
2 Left Hook 23 September 2007 @ 4:25 pm
OK, I never said this out loud cause it seemed so weirdly narcissistic, but now, all bets are off…
When I read one of The Smartest Man’s recent stories, I was like, That character kind of sounds like me? Or is described like me? Either way, I felt a little jolt of recognition. But then, I thought, that’s ridiculous! Why on earth would The Smartest Man be writing about me? Or, more properly, “me.” Anyway, it was the one where his authorial stand-in has a messy self-destructive drunken affair with a younger woman, ha ha.
Whatever.
3 Pistol Whip 24 September 2007 @ 11:32 am
I totally know what you mean.
Except… the dates are wrong. The story in question came out that first fall, so he wrote it before he met you.
But maybe it’s magic, and TSM saw you before he knew you. MAYBE HE CONJURED YOU INTO EXISTENCE. And maybe after he finished that story he wrote you into his class. And he wrote me in as your sidekick. Maybe we’re minor characters–who, like all minor characters (as the great man says) think we’re the main character–in another of his stories. Maybe we’re even meaty enough to warrant a whole novel!
Either way, you’ll want to keep the lights off.
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